I respect Victor Davis Hanson and have read his book “Mexifornia”. He comes from a multigenerational family of Mexican heritage. This is Hanson’s take on measures needed for a solution to US illegal immigration. He combines carrots and sticks.

But there is still a solution to the immigration problem: It involves supporting any practice that leads to the assimilation of legal Mexican immigrants into the American mainstream ? and opposing everything that does not.

1. As we’ve seen from second- and third-generation legal immigrants, when a person from Mexico comes to the U.S. with legal documentation, learns English and regards an unskilled job as the start, not the end, of a career, success most often follows.

And when immigrants, of all nationalities, finds themselves surrounded by others from all over the world, they generally accept English as our vital bond and see that a common culture, not race, is what matters.

2. ….numbers are important. The U.S. can assimilate hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, as it does with other immigrant groups, who come legally and are integrated throughout the nation in multiethnic neighborhoods. But it cannot assimilate quickly millions of abject poor who live in apartheid communities. There the joy of reaching the U.S. is replaced by the bitterness of becoming part of its collective underclass.

3. ……we should allow those illegal immigrants who have been living and working here for at least five years to start their citizenship process. But we should insist this be a one-time exemption rather than yet another periodic amnesty that encourages others to break the law and unfairly cut ahead in the immigration line.

Meanwhile, border enforcement, employer sanctions, walls and more officers to prevent illegal immigration will work, but only if we allow Mexico a generous quota of legal immigrants.

The real immigration debate is about turning legal arrivals into citizens. But we cannot do that until we work with those already here - and ensure that others in the future come legally and in measured numbers and so don’t repeat the shared mistakes of our past.

IF the stick was actually enforced then this might work. Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn’t have a track record of actual enforcement against illegal immigration from Mexico. People like Kennedy, McCain and Graham are the true elitists who really just want their maids, greens keepers, landscapers, waiters etc. to be there without interference in their elitist little lives. I don’t need a maid or a greens keeper or a waiter for my every day life. What I do need is lower taxes, I don’t want our government services supported by my taxes to provide benefits to a people who are not legally in this country nor do many of these people want to become assimilated as a citizen should. Don’t tell me that illegals pay taxes, whatever they contribute towards taxes is far overweighed by the government service dollars consumed. We have enough violent criminals of our own and don’t need to import gangs, rapists and drug runners from Mexico. See the criminal statistics from Signal 94 for information on this.

Victor Davis Hanson